Red Cove out to prove something

In a year things have not been going particularly well for fishers and fish processors, along comes a new processing company full of confidence.
The owners of Red Cove, a small plant situated at Howard's Cove in Cape Wolfe, held an open house last week, showing off a neat and tidy but virtually empty facility.
That changes this week when line workers start processing rock crab. During the year they will also work with mackerel, silver sides and whatever other fish products they are allowed to process.
The processing season launches a new chapter in the plant's varied history. It operated successfully on its own for many years, then joined the Polar Foods group of companies and was virtually cast aside after Polar went bankrupt.
Subsequent owners operated the plant for three years before selling it last winter to the Red Cove partners. Until the latest purchase there was concern over whether the plant would operate at all in 2009.
Now Red Cove is expecting to operate throughout June with 40 to 50 workers and then bump the number to 80, maybe even 100 workers, until September or October.
What's notable is the company expects to be employing that many workers without even touching the region's biggest seafood names, lobster and snow crab.
Of course, they are not allowed to process those products. A provincial agreement following the demise of Polar placed a moratorium on lobster and snow crab processing facilities. Red Cove can continue on as a processing facility but, until the moratorium expires, it can't touch lobster and snow crab.
The amount of equipment upgrades, renovations and painting the new owners paid for, since purchasing the Howard's Cove plant, is testimony they believe there's potential in the seafood processing industry, even without the big name products. That's confidence.
Most important, though, is that Red Cove is taking a plant that otherwise might not have operated this year and is creating jobs in a year when jobs are scarce and uncertainty is rampant.